Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, wrote in a post on Wednesday that the company “never intended or anticipated this functionality being used this way — and that is on us.”

Sandberg said Facebook is taking steps to ensure that material violating its community standards cannot be used in targeted ads. This includes anything that attacks people on the basis of race, religion, sexual orientation, disability and other categories.

Facebook is adding more manual oversight — a sign that as much as it wants to rely on artificial intelligence, it is not quite there yet. And a program will encourage users to report abuse of its advertising systems.

Entrepreneurship

4 state groups

getting grants

Four California organizations are among the recipients of the Commerce Department’s grants designed to promote innovation and entrepreneurship.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said that 42 groups, including nonprofits, institutions of higher education and entrepreneurship organizations, in 28 states received more than $17 million in grants.

Receiving the money in the state: the University of California, $500,000; Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, $500,000; the California Clean Energy Fund, $499,608; and the Giving Back Fund of Los Angeles, $492,357.

Restaurants

Book tables

through Airbnb

Airbnb is expanding into restaurant reservations, part of the startup’s plan to become a full-service travel-booking company like Priceline Group and Expedia.

Through Airbnb’s website and smartphone app, users can book tables at about 650 restaurants across the country, the company said Wednesday. The company had tested the service in San Francisco.

Airbnb used acquisitions and partnerships to speed up this expansion. Last year, Airbnb invested $13 million in restaurant-booking app maker Resy. Now, Resy will handle reservations for Airbnb users. Airbnb declined to disclose the size of its stake in Resy or say whether it has plans to buy the company outright.

The new service makes Airbnb more like Priceline, which owns OpenTable, the leading restaurant reservation service. By adding the table-booking option, Airbnb hopes to get its users to engage with the site more regularly.

“Integrating Resy bookings increases the value of Airbnb’s core product by making it a one-stop shop for travel,” said Arun Sundararajan, a professor at New York University.

Acquisitions

Symantec ends

Splunk talks

Symantec held talks to acquire Splunk but called them off after reviewing the analytics software company’s finances, people familiar with the matter said.

The Mountain View data-security provider saw Splunk as overvalued by the market, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions were private.

Symantec CEO Greg Clark told Bloomberg this month that Splunk was an attractive acquisition target for a strategic buyer. He didn’t say at the time whether it would be a good fit for Symantec. Clark also said that Symantec was open to doing a large acquisition but didn’t disclose any talks to buy San Francisco’s Splunk, which has a market value of $9.4 billion.

Symantec, with a market capitalization of $20.6 billion, has grown since last year through several large acquisitions. It acquired Blue Coat for $4.65 billion in a deal that brought Clark, previously Blue Coat’s CEO, to the company. It later announced a deal to buy LifeLock Inc. for $2.3 billion.

A Symantec spokeswoman declined to comment. A representative of Splunk didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Wearables

Amazon may

develop glasses

Amazon.com is reportedly attempting to develop glasses that pair with Alexa and would allow users to access the voice-activated assistant outside the home.

The Financial Times, citing anonymous sources, says the glasses could be released before the end of the year.

Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Snapchat sells $130 glasses that take a short video and post it on the social media app. And Alphabet sells Google Glass to employers, so that doctors or factory workers can search information or talk to co-workers hands free.

Media

More scrutiny for Sky bid

The British government has referred 21st Century Fox’s bid for satellite broadcaster Sky to competition authorities, a move that sets up a six-month investigation into Rupert Murdoch’s takeover plans.

The British competition agency said Wednesday that it will “examine how the deal would impact media plurality and broadcasting standards.”

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With Murdoch already owning the Sun and Times newspapers, there are concerns about too much power concentrated in one company.

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